


Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

by dyad (johnnycake)



Series: In the Bleak Midwinter... [5]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Consumption, F/M, Pre series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 06:09:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20384944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/dyad
Summary: Miri wakes up early to pick flowers for Tommy. She doesn't come home in one piece.





	Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

**Author's Note:**

> so fun fact: there is a song called where have all the flowers gone? (i can't remember who it's by though) that is about world war 1, so i felt this was an appropriate title. 
> 
> if you're new to this series pls make sure to read the series notes!! 
> 
> i would highly recommend the following songs to listen to while reading this:   
\- hurts like hell by fluerie   
\- i am stretched on your grave by kate rusby   
\- stay with me by clint mansell   
\- a stutter by olafur arnalds  
\- the killing of dumbledore by nicholas hooper  
\- near light by olafur arnalds

For the first time that she could remember, Miri woke up before Tommy. Her eyelids fluttered open as the sun came up, the light muted through the floral patterned curtains over the window, and she stared at the ceiling, watching it grow brighter as the minutes passed. She blinked, taking in sharp breaths, trying to remember, even now, where she was, forgetting she had been rescued, she had been saved, and she didn’t have to go home to her wretched father ever again.

Her eyes shut tight and her fingers curling into blankets at the mere memory of him.

She shuddered.

She would not think of him.

She would not think of the pain he’d caused her.

She would only think of the present, of now, of everything good that had happened to her since Tommy had come home. She would not think of anything else.

She would not remember she was dying.

_You’re safe, _she told herself, even though she didn’t quite believe it, _you’re alright. __You’re safe._

Still she didn’t believe it.

The sun shone brighter still, turning the world from the pale blue of early dawn to the pale yellow of early morning. She opened her eyes and sucked in another breath as she remembered why she’d gone to bed early, why she was up now.

She wanted to get a surprise for Tommy.

It was spring and the flower fields near the gypsy camp were in full bloom, full of flowers of every kind and shape and color. She wanted to get one of all of them, wanted to bring him a bouquet so large it filled her arms and wouldn’t even fit in a vase.

It had been so long since she’d brought him flowers.

As children, up until he’d gone to war, Miri had brought Tommy flowers constantly. Every time she’d seen him, every time she’d visited, she’d brought him a bouquet. It wasn’t until he’d gotten back that she’d learned that he’d kept every bouquet she’d given him, pressing them in large books in Polly’s study, keeping them forever. To this day, the thought still touched her. How could someone like him love someone like her so much? She couldn’t fathom it.

Turning her head, Miri saw Tommy, still fast asleep, next to her. He looked so much younger when he slept, his hair tousled, his hands resting on his bare chest, the wrinkles the war had given him smoothed out and gone as his chest slowly rose and fell.

Forcing herself up onto her elbows, she kissed his temple once, slowly, tenderly. Then she got up, doing her level best not to wake him.

Waking him would ruin everything. He couldn’t know about this until she came back.

Quietly, Miri dressed, pulling on the white dress that her grandmother had made her.

She would be back before Tommy even noticed she was gone.

The morning was bright and brilliant and beautiful, illuminating the dark streets of Small Heath in a beautiful golden glow.

Miri closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath, the air still crisp as the world left winter behind.

For a moment it almost felt like she’d never been sick at all.

She darted through streets and side alleys, ignoring the world as she made her way to the woods that housed the gypsy camp and then went beyond them to the field of flowers.

Whens he reached it, she was stopped short by the sheer beauty of it and she sucked in a gasp.

The flower field was indeed a spectacle to behold. Everything from dandelions to poppies to bleeding hearts to roses grew in the field, the colors of all the millions of petals lighting up the world around it in a way the sun could only dream of doing. The sight made her smile so wide it felt like her cheeks would split in two. She would pick every flower in the field – two of every flower even, maybe even three – and she would bring them all home to Thomas.

It would be the perfect surprise. A beautiful surprise. And after all that he’d been through in the war and since he’d gotten back, he deserved something so beautiful.

She ignored how tired the walk to the filed made her feel.

She ignored the ache in her joints and the pain in her lungs.

She ignored the way her heart pounded and her body screamed for rest.

She could rest later. After she’d gotten Tommy his bouquet, after all this. She could rest all day. But she had to do this first. This was more important.

Miri made her way into the brilliantly colored field, a conglomeration of every color of the rainbow brushing against her legs and her arms as she stretched them out to feel the soft petals. She had seen this field like this so many times in her youth and yet, even now, it still took her breath away.

Her eyes darted around the field, no part of her knowing where to start first.

She looked down in front of her as she reached the center of the field.

Poppies. There were poppies. She would start there. Then she would go to the bleeding hearts. Then the roses. Then the forget-me-nots and the daisies and the daffodils. She would pick every flower until her lungs ran out of breath, until her head spun in circles, until she was certain Tommy was awake, until she was completely spent.

Only then would she return home.

Miri bent, picking every flower her fingers brushed across. She picked them until her hands were full of stems of every kind and then she kept going, continued picking the flowers. She smiled, remembering when she’d been happier, healthier, more able to pick every flower in the field.

She would do it now. She would do it now even if it killed her.

Tommy needed something to remember her by.

By the time she finished, the sun was a quarter of the way into the sky and, as she turned to stare at it, she knew that Tommy as well as the rest of the house, would be waking up soon.

It was time to go back.

She spun on her heel and instantly froze, her body seizing as pain like nothing she’d felt gripped her and she clutched at her chest, trying to suck in air, but feeling more like she was breathing through a very thin tube. Then she began to cough, blood spattering the petals around her as she bent over double, her hand pressing into her chest now instead, trying anything to lessen the pain.

But it didn’t help.

Nothing helped.

The pain only increased.

She fell to her knees, still coughing, blood still going everywhere, her entire body shuddering as she struggled not to vomit.

She shuddered again, the blood and the coughs and everything else coming so much faster now that she was on her hands and knees on the ground. The pain was so intense she couldn’t even cry, couldn’t even scream. She could only endure, praying it would end, praying it would stop, wondering how she could have any blood left in her body with how much was coming up now.

Black spots danced in front of her vision.

Darkness slowly closed in around her.

It was only then Miri realized how foolish it had been to leave the house and not tell anyone where she was going.

_I’m going to die here. _ _Alone. In a field of beautiful flowers._

She supposed that wouldn’t be the worst way to go.

It was her last thought before the world went dark and oblivion took her.

* * *

Ever since Tommy had gotten back from France, he hadn’t spent one night alone. He always had Miri by his side. He fell asleep, listening to her breathing instead of the shovels digging against the walls. They’d started when he’d been in France and hadn’t ever really gone away. Every night, he’d listened to them, thinking of the tunnels, thinking of the days, weeks, months, he’d spent in the dark with Freddie and Danny and the rest of the 179 for company. That is until the tunnel had collapsed on top of them. Then it was only he, Danny, and Freddie until the tunnelers were no longer needed and they were sent back to the trenches and the war was nearly over.

Every night as he tried to fall asleep in the barracks after the war before they shipped out, he’d heard them. Every night, he’d woken up, willing himself not to scream when he did and wake up everyone else along with him. Danny was the one that couldn’t hold back his screams. Danny was the one the rest of the barracks had to comfort and coax back to sleep.

Tommy Shelby refused to make himself a burden on the rest of his men. He was their Sargent Major. He was supposed to be strong. These things were not supposed to bother him.

But they had. They did.

Until now.

Miri did what no one and nothing could.

She made the shovels go away.

She made it so Tommy could sleep at night.

And when he woke up next to her every morning, even though she looked half dead already from illness, though she struggled to breathe, though she was slowly, more and more, becoming a shadow of the girl he had known growing up, he still smiled and thanked whoever was listening that he’d told her, at long last, just how much he loved her.

He just wished, more than anything else, they had more time.

The warmth of the sun was what woke him first instead of the light. He squeezed as wind blew through the open window, billowing the curtains enough that the sunlight fell right on his eyes. He turned his head, smiling, thinking of Miri sleeping next to him, her long dark hair spread out over the pillow, her breathing labored, but the rise and fall of her body gentle as she slept. Even now with how sick she was, she still looked, in sleep, like the young girl he’d left behind when he’d gone to France.

But, when he opened his eyes, he was alone.

Immediately the smile vanished from his face, panic settling into his chest.

_Don’t panic,_ he told himself, sitting upright a little too fast, grabbing his shirt from where he’d dropped it the night before when he’d gone to bed. _She’s probably just gone down for breakfast. She’s probably fine. There’s no reason to panic. There’s no reason for it._

“Polly!” Tommy shouted from the top of the stairs, pounding down them much harder and faster than – he was telling himself – was necessary. “Where’s Miri? Have you seen her?”

Polly was at the stove making eggs and potatoes for breakfast. Arthur and John were fooling around at the table and Finn was egging them on, saying words he shouldn’t have known for his age, but, growing up around the rest of them, he had learned pretty quickly. She looked up when Tommy spoke and said, “I thought she was upstairs with you.”

Tommy’s chest heaved and he shook his head, his mouth open as he gasped for air.

Arthur and John had stopped messing with each other, their smiles gone.

“Then where is she?” Polly asked, her own voice bordering on hysteria.

More than anything else, it was this that made Tommy well and truly begin to panic. Polly, the voice of reason, the calm one in the stormy sea, was panicking, which meant there really was something to panic about. It occurred to him then, however vaguely, that it had been Polly who’d watched over Miri for the last nine months while she’d been sick and he’d been in France. It had been Polly who’d taken her to the doctor when she’d first become ill, Polly who’d been there when the doctor told them Miri was dying. Polly knew more about Miri’s illness than he, John, and Arthur combined.

If Polly was afraid of Miri being on her own, the rest of them should be too.

Tommy went to the table, bracing his hands on the tabletop, clenching his jaw, trying to think of all the places Miri might be. She’d left no note, no indication of where she might’ve gone and, if she’d gone before anyone else had gotten up, that meant she’d been gone for hours now.

There was a very good chance that when he _did_ find her, he would be coming upon a corpse.

He shut his eyes tight, his body jerking at the thought.

He could not think of that possibility.

He would not.

Life without Miri was no life at all.

His eyes opened and his lips parted as he sucked in a breath.

All at once, he knew exactly where she was.

Turning on his heel, Tommy ran out of the house, ignoring the shouts that followed him, letting the door slam behind him. He ran down Watery Lane as fast as his legs would carry him. He didn’t stop until he was out of the Small Heath proper, until he was in the forest and then didn’t stop until he reached the edge of the flower field.

His eyes darted around the flowers, unable to see their brilliance in his panic, his chest heaving, his lungs burning, the world spinning.

_No._

It was empty.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted so loud he was certain they heard him in London, “_Miri_!”

He stepped into the field. She was here. He was sure of it. He called her name again.

“_Miri_! _Please_!”

On impulse he looked down.

And immediately covered his mouth, sucking in a breath.

There she was, her dark hair spread out in a halo around her head, covering the flowers around her, which were all covered in thick red drops of blood. In her hand was loosely clutched a bouquet of every flower he could see around him.

The sight broke his heart.

She’d gotten up early to pick him flowers. She’d come here alone without telling anyone because she’d wanted to surprise him. And the universe had rewarded her by making her cough up so much blood he couldn’t fathom her being alive.

She certainly didn’t look alive.

Tommy fell to his knees, carefully pulling her into his arms. “Miri,” he gasped, gently shaking her, tapping her cheeks, willing her to open her eyes. “Miri, please, please, wake up. Please, Miri.”

But she didn’t. She remained motionless in his arms.

He couldn’t help but notice the dress she wore looked like something an angel would wear.

A dead angel.

_No._ He _would_ not think of that. He would not lose her yet.

He could not.

Gathering her up in his arms, he carried her home, praying to whoever might be listening that she was alright, that everything was going to be okay, that she hadn’t been there that long, that whatever was wrong was easily fixable and that he was panicking for no reason.

But even as he got home, even as he screamed to John he was driving Miri to the hospital, even as he laid her head in his lap as he got in the front seat – one hand on the wheel, the other carding through her hair – he knew in his heart – just as he knew the sky was blue and day would turn to night – that his prayers would not be answered.

Of all the things Thomas Shelby was, lucky was not one of them.

* * *

The hospital in Small Heath was not a foreign place to the Shelbys. Tommy still remembered the times he’d come here to see his mother in the months before she died. She’d been there in the mental ward until the doctors finally discharged her and sent her home, determining there was nothing more they could do for her. She’d died only a few weeks later.

Tommy had hated hospitals ever since and avoided them wherever possible.

But Miri was sick. Very sick. And there were somethings the hospitals knew how betters to do and handle than even Jeremiah did.

Today, no matter how much he did not want to, he had to visit the hospital.

He lifted Miri up out of the front seat as gently as though she were made of glass and managed to shove the doors open by backing into them. The woman at the front desk recognized him and got him into an examination room right away, promising the doctor would be along in a moment.

All he could manage to do was nod numbly in reply.

Carefully, carefully, Tommy laid Miri down on the examination table, brushing her hair out of her eyes as he did so and, his hands trembling, wiped the blood from her lips.

He stepped back and licked his lips, staring down at her.

She was gaunt, so pale her skin looked translucent, the circles around her eyes so dark they appeared sunken in. She was so small and helpless and broken and dying, dying, dying.

A single tear made a trail down his cheek.

He didn’t bother to reach up and wipe it away.

A life without Miri was no life at all and very soon he was going to know exactly what that felt like in all its unending horror.

“Mr. Shelby?”

Tommy turned, watching the doctor come in. Wordlessly, he stepped aside.

He couldn’t even make himself speak to tell the doctor what happened. He simply gestured to Miri on the table, praying the doctor would know, somehow, what he meant.

_Help her. Save her. Please. I can’t lose her. Not yet._

_ Not yet._

_Not ever._

But even Thomas Shelby knew that wasn’t an option available to him. Not this time.

Tommy did not see the world around him as the doctor listened to Miri’s chest, took her pulse, looked in her mouth, shone light into her eyes.

He saw the future instead.

He saw Miri dead, unmoving, cold, lifeless. Forever. Nothing in the world to save her this time. Nothing in the world to save her ever again.

He saw her funeral, her caravan going up in smoke, surrounded by flowers and covered in trinkets and filled with every material item she had ever loved.

He saw Polly crying. He saw Arthur crying too. He saw John trying not to cry. And he saw himself on his knees, screaming for the world to take him too because he could not survive a future without her. He saw himself drinking and drinking and never recovering and never wanting to either.

He saw the shovels coming back full force, nothing able to take them away ever again.

He saw unhappiness, so acute and so astounding it threatened to drown him.

He saw pain and agony, so visceral and horrifying it took his breath away.

Forever and ever.

He was so lost in his thoughts, he didn’t hear the doctor at first, unable to comprehend for several moments that he was speaking to him and not someone else.

“Mr. Shelby.”

Tommy blinked and looked up.

The doctor’s brow was pulled together and his lips were pressed into a thin line.

So the news was bad news. Tommy steeled himself, waiting for the blow to break his heart all over again and again and again and again.

“I believe her lung has collapsed,” he said, glancing back at Miri. “We’d have to do an exploratory surgery to be sure, but...even if her lung has not collapsed – which I strongly believe it has – the surgery is very risky. Without it, she will surely die, With it...she could still die on the table.”

It was an impossible choice, something his life seemed to be full of.

His heart shattered so loudly it deafened him.

_Forever and ever._

Tommy swallowed. “Do the surgery,” he said, his voice flat, his eyes never leaving Miri. “Do what you must to save her.”

The doctor nodded and left the room. He returned, moments later, with a small team of nurses, all there to prepare Miri for the operation.

One of them pried the flowers from her fingers, some of the stems breaking and fluttering to the flower, and went to throw them in the wastebasket.

“No!” Tommy shouted, throwing out an arm.

Everyone in the room froze.

“Give me the flowers. They belong to me. They belong to me. She picked them for me.”

Tentatively, the nurse handed them to him.

Tommy took them, his hand trembling, and put them in his breast pocket.

If they were to be his last gift from Miri, he wasn’t going to have them thrown away or crushed.

The nurses took Miri out of her simple white dress, now spattered with her own blood, and changed her into a hospital gown.

Tommy looked away as they undressed her, feeling that seeing her naked while so sick, so vulnerable, was not something he or anyone else was supposed to see.

He wished the doctor would look away too.

The nurses got her onto a stretcher and began to carry her to the operating theater. The doctor following, already wearing a surgical cap and holding a mask in his hand.

The doctor stopped halfway there and turned to Tommy. “I would not normally offer this, but...would you...like to be there with her? During the operation?”

Tommy sucked in a breath.

Seeing Miri get cut open, seeing them take her apart and put her back together again...he knew it would break him in ways he’d never heal from.

Watching her die like that would destroy him completely.

He nodded once. “Yes.”

* * *

The operating theater was so white it was blinding and so sterile that it reeked of antiseptic.

Tommy hated it from the moment he stepped inside.

This was where Miri would be cut open, filleted like a fish. And the tragedy of it all was it still wouldn’t save her. Even if she didn’t die here today on this table, she was still going to die in a few months and everything that was good in the world would die with her.

Tommy watched, his eyes glazed over, as the doctors pumped anesthesia into her rotting, damaged lungs; he watched as they undid the front of her gown, exposing her chest; he watched as, with a big black marker, they drew dashed lines on her chest, marking where they were going to cut her open, trying not to listen to what they were saying they were going to do, though he knew in a few minutes he was going to see it for himself. He watched as they rubbed antiseptic on her chest and then, his face twisting into a grimace of its own accord, watched as they slowly began to cut her open.

After France, Tommy had thought he’d seen it all, thought he’d seen all the horrific ways a man could die or be cut or shot or tortured. He’d seen men with their guts hanging out of their middles. He’d seen boys, younger than him by several years, crying for their mothers, and men older than him by many more years doing the same, both of them bleeding out of places they should not have been. He’d seen men get their limbs amputated so they wouldn’t die. He’d heard them scream loudly, begging for death instead.

All of that was nothing compared to the horror of seeing Miri cut into.

There was so much blood, more than he’d ever seen in his life it seemed and Miri was so small, he didn’t understand how so much blood could come out of her and there still be more. It pooled on the operating table, under it. It was collected by the nurses in buckets and by the doctors in towels.

More than once, he had to turn away, his nails dug into his palms, his arm braced near Miri’s head on the operating table, struggling to keep down what little was in his stomach. He shuddered and gasped, his eyes shut tight, his jaw clenched.

Miri had suffered so much in her life, horrors no one could imagine unless they’d been through it themselves. She didn’t deserve this, she didn’t deserve to die like this. If she died on this table, here, today, it would be cruelty beyond all imagining.

Tommy had thought after France he’d lost faith in God.

He realized now there had been a shred of him that had still believed.

But it was gone now.

There couldn’t be a God that existed that would allow someone as beautiful and kind, innocent and pure, sweet and loving as Miri Jurossi suffer like this.

It turned out that all of the blood was only the beginning of the horror. Once they got through her skin to her ribs, he watched as the doctor used forceps, cracking them open to get to her lungs.

The sound it made was sickening.

Tommy covered his mouth to keep from vomiting.

He jumped when he heard it.

It only lasted a fraction of a second, but he knew it would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. Everything about this would.

Under her ribs were her lungs, blackened, rotted, dying. The organs around them looked just as damaged, just as shriveled. It was the first time Tommy truly saw what death looked like. He was staring it in the face, he realized. He was looking death in the face and death was looking back and laughing at him, telling him, _There’s nothing you can do! You cannot stop this! All that will be left of her when I am through is rotted organs, curdled blood, and agony!_

It took everything in him not to scream until his own throat bled.

It took even more not to punch the wall until he broke his knuckles or sweep all of the glittering silver instruments off their tray and watch them clatter to the floor.

Even after all this pain, even after they cut into her lungs and released the pressure there, even after they got them to inflate properly again, it was all for nothing. They would still rot and she would still die and there was nothing anyone on earth could do about it.

Tommy knew the world was cruel and unjust, but he had never felt it as acutely as he did then.

He knew he never would again.

It wasn’t until they were closing her up, putting her ribs back in place, stitching up her chest, that he realized the operation had lasted most of the day. Hours upon hours he’d spent in the operating theater, watching a nightmare he would never ever be able to forget for as long as he lived.

It had felt so much longer than that.

His legs feeling like jello, Tommy followed the doctors and nurses as they hooked Miri up to IVs, took the tubes out of her mouth, and carried her into a hospital bedroom, putting an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, helping her to breathe. He didn’t enter the hospital room, not at first. He watched them cover her with blankets, so much whiter than all the blood that had been taken out of her small frail form during the operation, fluff the pillows beneath her head, and then leave.

The doctor said something to him, maybe a promise she would wake up soon, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t even acknowledge he’d heard him. He only leaned against the doorjamb, staring at Miri, wondering if this had truly saved her or if her life expectancy had been shortened now due to the stress the surgery had put on her body.

He was too afraid to ask.

He knew he would have to eventually.

It wasn’t until he was alone that he stepped into the room, his movements stilted, broken, his legs still shaking badly, still feeling like they would give out at any moment.

He collapsed into the chair by her bed.

His hands shook so violently it took him several tries to take her hand in both of his.

Something within him cracked wide open.

He sucked in a shuddering breath and it came out as a violent sob.

He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t. It would destroy what little was left of him. It would leave him, hard, unfeeling, cold cruel. He would never love again, not really, he knew that. He knew it as surely as he knew he couldn’t stop her death though he so very desperately wanted to.

Again Tommy saw the future, but this time it was his.

And what he saw made him only sob all the harder.

The world was unjust and cruel.

And Thomas Shelby was anything but lucky.

**Author's Note:**

> i have so many more ideas yeehaw!!! i just need more ideas for when they were kids, so i can break y'all's hearts even further heh heh heh. so if you have any ideas....lemme know. 
> 
> also i don't mention this in the fic because, at this point, tommy doesn't know yet why, but polly sees miri as her own daughter and losing her would be very detrimental to her wellbeing as well because of how she lost her children to the parish when they were so young, so yay!! more heartache :D 
> 
> finally: idk for certain how surgeries were done in the 20s, so this is all just a guess and based off of the videos i found on youtube so *shrug emoji* hopefully i got it right??


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